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Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

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Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#71

Post by DoingIsLearning »

sabellito wrote: post #22
patall wrote: post #10

My dad has bought the 25.3'' E ink monitor from Dasung. From what he tells, it does not have a backlight and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day. Maybe it will be better during summer or in bright condition but sitting further away from these devices may require more than just reflectiveness for some users.

That's kinda the point of these things, to not be backlit; you're supposed to provide the needed amount of light yourself.

> and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day.

Indeed, from the description it sounds like their work setup doesn't have enough ambient light for confortable reading conditions.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#72

Post by layer8 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #47
numpad0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrast ratio of E Ink is like 10:1. I don't know exactly how it compares but backlit LCD is approx 1k:1, OLED is 1m:1 in contrast (pun intended).

You can't compare the contrast of an emissive (backlit LCD/OLED) and a reflective (eInk) display. Put your OLED display in direct sunlight on a bright summer day and you will get effectively get no contrast at all, the screen will reflect so much sunlight that your puny LEDs won't do much of a difference. Backlit LCDs will get some weak contrast because the backpanel is a bit reflective, but eInk displays will always…

10:1 is nevertheless quite low. Black is really dark grey, and white is light grey. Having bad eyesight, I find e-ink displays too straining to use in most lighting conditions.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#73

Post by patagonicus »

patall wrote: post #10

My dad has bought the 25.3'' E ink monitor from Dasung. From what he tells, it does not have a backlight and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day. Maybe it will be better during summer or in bright condition but sitting further away from these devices may require more than just reflectiveness for some users.

Huh, weird. I got the small Dasung with a backlight, but I almost never use the backlight since avoiding that is one of the reasons I did get an E-Ink screen in the first place. You do need the room to be somewhat well lit, so in the mornings and evenings I'll turn on the overhead lights. Probably slightly harder to read than a book since the background isn't bleached white, but it's close-ish.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#74

Post by cassianoleal »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #53
zwirbl wrote: post #13

I couldn't find a video of the display in use, so here it goes (for the 13.3" version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ seems a little slow and the screen refreshes sometimes excessive, but much better than I expected

I still don't understand how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this? - Longer battery life - easy on the eyes for long sessions reading/writing - Allows me to actually work outside!!! There is a huge market of people out there (Thinking about the typical ThinkPad users) that don't give 2 craps about color accuracy. We literally just want to read and write. Anyone envolved in Product Managem…

Try reducing your screen's refresh rate to mimic that of an eInk display. Interacting with the machine becomes a horrible chore. Every input feels laggy and sluggish. It's hard to control the pointer. Even at 30Hz it becomes very difficult to focus on the actual tasks because the computer doesn't seem to respond to your commands.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#75

Post by avar »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #61
breakfastduck wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to sell a device that costs significantly more than any other for the same power to provide what 99% of users would consider a sub par/ unusable display. Like seriously can you imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to watch any media, play any games and has the refresh rate / perceived performance of a 15 year old tablet. This stuff isn't ready to be a 'main' display yet.

> imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to - watch any kind of media - looks 'laggy' Imagine thinking that the consumer market is only for media consumers. There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support. I wouldn't argue that someone buying this machine would only use only this machine. But I know I am not alon…

I'm as much of a fan of the potentials of this technology as anyone, but it really look like it's terrible to use as a main display even for non-multimedia applications.

I.e. try setting your mouse or keyboard to have even 50-100ms of lag, a lot of people would find that very distracting to use even for just using a terminal Emacs/Vim & for writing plain-text.

There's a reason these things are being marketed as "secondary displays", which makes perfect sense.

In terms of cost I really don't see why anyone would want to do it differently anyway. A 20" LCD is dirt-cheap these days, so if you're already spending 5x or 10x that on the same size of E-Ink display why not get both?

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#76

Post by dspillett »

TruthWillHurt wrote: post #39

Not a word on refresh rate.

Unless they have some wizz-bang new tech that no one else is using yet, which they would shout about if they were, with eInk you can pretty much say “if your use case makes you care much about refresh rates then eInk isn't a good choice for you ATM”.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#77

Post by tern »

Epa095 wrote: post #62
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this? - Longer battery life - easy on the eyes for long sessions reading/writing - Allows me to actually work outside!!! There is a huge market of people out there (Thinking about the typical ThinkPad users) that don't give 2 craps about color accuracy. We literally just want to read and write. Anyone envolved in Product Managem…

The old OLPC laptop had a weird screen which kind of became a black and white e-ink screen when the brightness got turned all the way down, and was a quite normal colour screen otherwise. No clue how it was made though, and if there has been any further work in that direction.

If you're curious about this, it's an interesting story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi and I still want a device with one

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#78

Post by LoveMortuus »

breakfastduck wrote: post #57
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this? - Longer battery life - easy on the eyes for long sessions reading/writing - Allows me to actually work outside!!! There is a huge market of people out there (Thinking about the typical ThinkPad users) that don't give 2 craps about color accuracy. We literally just want to read and write. Anyone envolved in Product Managem…

No one is going to sell a device that costs significantly more than any other for the same power to provide what 99% of users would consider a sub par/ unusable display. Like seriously can you imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to watch any media, play any games and has the refresh rate / perceived performance of a 15 year old tablet. This stuff isn't ready to be a 'main' display yet.

What if they made the display modular, so that you could swap it with a regular display for when you want to do gaming and other stuff like that?

I personally would buy an e-ink laptop, but then again I'm very much into e-ink, I have a Kindle and ReMarkable 2, years ago I also bought DPT-S1 but I returned it because it was too expensive.

Also colour e-ink displays have been getting better and better too! So I'm sure that in time, it'll be amazing!

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#79

Post by fho »

lvncelot wrote: post #45
fho wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised how far contrast (and cursive, bold, etc) can get you. Eg: https://github.com/fxn/vim-monochrome edit: Also, and probably a lot more controversial, code structure matters a lot. No syntax highlighting will save you if your code consists of opaque blocks of text.

That example is a little misleading though, since it's using a shade of blue for comments and strings. But in general, I'd agree, I've been using a monochrome color scheme for a few weeks (although mostly for the novelty) and it's definitely usable. When given the choice, I will use a full-color one though.

Good point. Here's the same image desaturated: https://i.imgur.com/jBCZGEO.png (GIMP -> Desaturate -> Luminance)

I feel like it does not really lose anything in grayscale.

Bonus: On a eInk display black on white is probably nicer: https://i.imgur.com/99DSGrV.png

(Does Imgur allow direct links to images?)

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#80

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

rbanffy wrote: post #36
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it has potential but won't "arrive" until after the patents all expire This is somewhat of a misconception. The high cost today has nothing to do with patents anymore, for the most part, though that' still a speedbump. It getting good yields in the fabs for the e-ink films that's the problem, and that's where e-ink has the secret sauce and why others can't compete even though they know how it works. It's like saying…

> It getting good yields in the fabs for the e-ink films that's the problem There is a decent market for rigid (heavy) 20-30" ~100 dpi panels as desktop monitors. Lowering the pixel density would certainly increase the yield, as would the rigid back. There is a high premium for light panels for e-readers and portables, but for use as a desktop monitor, we can deal with a lot more weight and, since we see them from fu…

>There is a decent market for rigid (heavy) 20-30" ~100 dpi panels as desktop monitors.

Do you have a source for these claims?

Looking at what seels well today, and what most average consumers go for, it's bigger screens with high pixel density. Low pixel density displays are mostly found in bottom of the barrel, discount bin products whith poor margins for their manufacturers, so the market has already spoken with their money in this regard and separated the winners from the losers.

So I think, that market you think of, exists only for you.

>Lowering the pixel density would certainly increase the yield

That's not how yealds work here. Small display sizes gives you good yealds and affordable price. That's why you mostly see them on electronic shelf labels and ebook readers.

That's why large e-ink displays, like the remarkable tablet, are so expensive.

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